Just in case

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

Mom ~ bed ~ coffee ~ bagel ~ 4 cats ~ snore

They were submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

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I don't really know why I decided to learn Morse code. I've been at home since... Well, I don't like to talk about but I've been living with Mom and her 4 cats since my breakdown. Let's just call it what it is. I was burnt out working in special education and everything piled on and the world went nuts with COVID and I just couldn't keep up. I had to stay inpatient for awhile. I had to quit my job. So now I'm here right? I'm not delusional. I'm not crazy. I'm not psychotic. 

I just need to make that clear.

And I don't know why I decided to learn Morse code. Like I said. I thought it might be fun. I thought it would be easy and different and useless. I mean who uses it anymore? I just wanted to know a thing that wouldn't be used to market me. Does that make sense? I just wanted to have a thing that was all mine. I saw it in one of my dad's old boy scout books and went down to the old used bookstore at the corner of Graham and Pine and found a full actual book with practice and everything. 

Ok and I got a little too obsessed and also got 5 more books about codebreaking and history and shit but it's still not crazy. I'm still not delusional. Ok? I need that to be clear before I continue. I'm not losing it whether I had a little nervous breakdown or not. I feel better than I have in a long time even though I know I have a long road to get back to where I want to be. But I get up every day and look forward to having a breakfast bagel and coffee with Mom. I look forward to helping her out around her. I look forward to play time with the cats. I even taught them how to do tricks! So life isn't the best it's ever been or the best it will be, but it's good. I'm good. I'm in therapy. I sleep well when I don't wake my own self up with my loud as fuck snore. I'm not... This isn't because of what happened. Just please believe me.

Ok. So.

The first time I noticed it, I'd been doing the Morse code thing for a couple weeks. I was getting better at it, right? The first little bit of doing it, I just couldn't get it. I thought I'd never remember all this shit. It's like making a whole language out of beep boop beep beep. But it weirdly also made me feel closer to dad. He was so into boy scouts as a kid. He made it all the way to eagle scout. And then he was always a scout leader for my brother when it was his time to do scouts. I never really got that experience. I never got the camping trips or the badges or any of that shit. And then he was gone. Who expects to lose their dad at 16 before he can even teach her how to change her oil or fix a flat? It was kind of an unexpected consequence of getting into it. It felt like I was getting a half ass chance to do things over with dad. And the code history was pretty fucking interesting on top of that. I was in bed reading way too late every single night. Navajo coder talkers? How does history get better than that? Ok ok bad phrasing. How does it get more interesting than that? I suddenly started to understand all those Ken Burns documentaries dad had been into, all the history channel shows. I felt like I was finally starting to understand him... And for a long time I had never felt that connection. I couldn't. He'd always been busy with Joey not me. He'd never had time for tea parties and princess on ice shows. He didn't talk about periods or makeup or dating. And then he wasnt around at all. I'd been more than a little resentful.

Anyway, I'm digressing. The point is that I wasn't looking for anything weird and I wasn't in a bad place. For the first time in my life my dad was becoming a whole, interesting person. I tapped into parts of me that were straight from him, and it felt great.

So I'm doing some work in my Morse code book when I hear some tapping on tree right outside my window. I'd heard it before and figured it was just some super persistent woodpecker, but now I noticed a pattern. The pecks had a rhythm now that my previously untrained brain hadn't been able to pick up on.

It was Morse code.

Now listen I've been wrestling with this. I know how this sounds obviously. I know how it must seem, so let me assure you I've gone back and forth on this. It took me days to bring it up to even my mom. It took me longer to write this down in case this is what's left of... I don't know. The truth is really that I don't even know if this message is for me or for birds or for animals that aren't birds or for humans in general. Why Morse code if it wasn't? That's what I keep coming back to. Why a human made language?

But what if it isn't human made? What if we stole it from patterns we noticed in nature? Ok I'm getting ahead of myself here. What I need you to know is that mom heard it too. She doesn't know how to translate it but she heard the patterns. She wrote down in her own way what she was hearing and it was definitely repeating in a short pattern. I helped her translate--without really telling her first what I'd heard!! And it was the same. We heard the same thing. Doesn't that make me more credible? My mom has been the most solid person I have ever, ever known. You ask anyone, well anyone left, and they'd say the same. She was a constant in the neighborhood taking food to sick people, picking up supplies, keeping someone's kids if they had an emergency...leading Sunday school and working at the elementary school library. My mom is an indefatigable force of good and she's amazing and she's sane.

Even if you question me, you ask anyone in this community, and they'd believe her. They would.

We both heard it. And I don't know what it means. But I don't think it's good.

"They're coming soon."

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:


Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

The Interview

“I knew something was wrong for a long time, but I couldn’t admit it. Not out loud anyway.” She sighed, picked up another cigarette out of the pack sitting on the table in front of her, lit it, and took a deep drag sighing again as she exhaled a thick plume of smoke. She’d been chain-smoking since she got into the fluorescently-lit, cold interview room, but those were the first words she’d spoken. She stared at the two-way mirror on the wall across from where she sat. She wanted her observers to know she realized they were there.

She pushed her honey blonde hair behind her ear and leaned back in her chair. She was too thin and haggard, dark quarter moons punctuating her sunken eyes. It was obvious that something had been weighing on her for quite some time, but it wasn’t impossible to see that she was beautiful—high cheek bones, oceanic eyes, a creamy complexion with a button nose and a smattering of freckles across it that kept her looking young even though she was pushing 40 despite how worn she looked in those harsh lights wrapped in a thick cloud of her own smoke.

The bulbous detective seated across from her gave her a long, silent, sterile stare. It was intended to make her talk, but she was tough. She returned the stare with an unrivaled iciness that told everyone behind the mirror that she wasn’t putting up with any shit. Not today. Not here. Not from them.

He was the one to break the silence first. “What do you mean you knew something was wrong?”

She shook her head seeming both absolutely exhausted with all of this and amused at the question all at once and barked a short laugh.

“I know why I’m here and why you’re the one that’s ‘interviewing’ me instead of some young, fresh-faced guy with half as many wrinkles that hasn’t seen as many tragedies and still has some warmth left to his eyes. If it were that guy, I’d be getting the sympathetic ear of someone who understands I had no involvement in what my husband has done. But, it’s you in here with your stony glares, all attitude and demands and a face hardened by too many long nights dealing with dead kids beaten lifeless by their own parents and rape victims thrown out of cars and left for dead in ditch somewhere like their mothers’ worst nightmares come true. You sitting right there with your arms crossed and that grimace slashed across your face tell me that you already suspect I might have known all along and helped that piece of shit with his handiwork. Am I right?”

“Ma’am…”

“I’m right. You don’t even have to say it.” She blew the smoke from the last drag of her cigarette out the corner of her mouth, stubbed it out into the too full ashtray sitting in front of her, and immediately lit another one. She tapped the lighter over and over again on the surface of the table staring straight ahead, gaze never wavering.

He huffed and shifted his considerable weight on the chair, but he didn’t say anything. He stared her down yet again attempting to wait out her explanation.

More or less, it was a Mexican Standoff.

A half hour later, the rest of her cigarettes gone, she asked for another pack.

He huffed again but this time he leaned forward tapping his finger onto the table gruffly and stated matter-of-factly, “You can fucking forget it until you talk.”

“Listen, Porky, you can get me those cigarettes or we can sit here all fucking night. The choice is yours. And, I’d recommend, if I were you, sending them in with someone who isn’t such a dickwad because as long as you have the attitude you came in here with, you’re not getting shit from me.”

He sat back, red-faced. She figured if she spit in his face right then, it would sizzle, steam rising into the air above him. He grumbled unintelligibly under his breath but pushed his considerable weight out of the chair. His knees nearly gave out on him but he straightened up and made the short walk to the door slamming it behind him.

She looked around the room bouncing one knee needing another cigarette. She rarely smoked anymore, but she could not take this pressure right now without a nicotine rush. It would take forever to get the smell out of her hair. There was nothing remarkable about the four walls. A few paint chips. A spider web in one corner. The tile needed buffing. But all in all it was pretty depressingly whitewashed and bland. She supposed it was intentional to keep people from getting distracted or from distracting themselves anyway. The feeling of being watched wouldn’t change though even if there were a mural of fluffy bunnies and rainbows painted on the walls.

The door opened and a female detective with auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun waltzed in and sat the pack of cigarettes on the table between them before taking a seat. The detective pulled the chair in close to the table and gave her a long look. There was nothing assuming or pretentious in that look though which put her at ease a little.

“Listen, Mrs. Parker, we’ve got to make progress here. We’ve been here for hours. You’re tired. We’re tired. Can you please explain what you meant by your earlier statement that you knew what was going on but couldn’t admit it?”

“First of all, get it right, okay? Let’s set the record straight right now. I said I knew something was wrong. I did not ever say that I knew what was going on. Get it down. Record it. Make sure all those motherfuckers back behind the glass have it written down because this goes nowhere. No. Where. Until that’s straight. Got it?”

“Does that mean I can record this and you’ll give your written permission for that?”

“Sure, if that ensures you’ll get the story straight instead of screwing the shit up the way you assholes always do. Bring it out. Tape recorder. Video recorder. I don’t care. Do what you need to do.”

The detective turned abruptly to the mirror told them to set it up and made a hand motion. A young uniformed cop brought in a sheet of paper and sat it on the table. She took it and looked it over. “Give me a pen…”

The female detective obliged pulling a plain black bic ballpoint pen out of a pocket inside her blazer.

She took the pen, signed the paper with a huge superfluous signature.

“Thanks, Mrs. Parker. Now, why don’t we start from the beginning? What exactly is it that you couldn’t admit?”

Of course, this has been another edition of Sunday Confessions with More Than Cheese and Beer. The prompt this week was admit and since I'm so fucking obscenely candid on this blog at times, I have no real admissions to make so here's some fiction. Hope you enjoy and as always let me know what you think!